Lionsgate Play is now available standalone. The Hollywood studio best known for John Wick and The Hunger Games has quietly launched its own app, nearly 15 months after Lionsgate Play first entered India in partnership with telecom operators: first with Vodafone, followed by Airtel and Jio. Lionsgate Play costs Rs. 99 per month or Rs. 699 per year after a 14-day free trial. The Lionsgate Play app is live on Google Play and App Store, and the streaming service is also available on lionsgateplay.com.
The reason for Lionsgate Play’s zero-fanfare launch is because this is more of a beta tech test. Lionsgate Play is expected to have its official launch in the first week of December, the company’s India outfit has told Gadgets 360, when it will also add more exclusives, including the Indian premiere of the British comedy series The Goes Wrong Show — created by Mischief Theatre’s Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields — which originally aired last December through January on BBC One in the UK.
In terms of content, Lionsgate Play currently offers dozens of Hollywood movies and TV shows, with some of them, in addition to the original English, available in several Indian languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, and Bhojpuri. Not all titles are available in all languages, and many titles are only offered in English. The series line-up is fairly tiny, though given the service hasn’t officially launched yet, this can’t be taken as a metric of what will be offered. The FAQ section says that some shows will be aired “same time as the US”.
While most content is in full-HD, select content will be offered in 4K. There’s no mention of Dolby Vision or Dolby Atmos though. But Lionsgate Play is clearly in a tech test, considering the service currently refuses to deactivate our subscription. Even after multiple attempts, the Lionsgate Play website tells us that our plan will be automatically renewed once the two-week trial period ends. That’s not a good thing.
Oh my, the size of that watermark
Photo Credit: Lionsgate
The other problem, and one that is unlikely to go away, is the giant Lionsgate Play watermark that is splashed on content in the right-top corner. This was also a major annoyance with Lionsgate Play on Airtel XStream, Vi Movies and TV, and JioTV+, and it seems like Lionsgate has no intention of getting rid of the logo even though it now has its own platform. It’s very distracting, due to its sheer size and the fact that it has no transparency.
Lionsgate also operates a platform called Starzplay, offered in 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and Pakistan. In the US, Starzplay was merged with Starz.com in 2016. These subscriptions are separate, even as your Lionsgate Play support ticket requests will be sent to StarzPlay.
Lionsgate Play app is now available on Android, iPhone, iPad, Android TV, Apple TV, and the Web.
